The Smell of Change

I love living in the country. I've lived out of the city most of my life except for a small stint in a big college town in my 20's and a longer stint in a big coastal California town where I could hang out anonymously and not know any of my neighbors until I learn later on the news that they all committed suicide because of a comet.

When you live in the country it's a lot easier to become in tune with the natural world around you. The smells are different, there is little light pollution, noise pollution, and general... pollution pollution.

The other night I stepped out onto the porch and on my first deep breath I thought, "Hmm, smells like snow is coming."

Seriously? On a conscious level I have no idea what it smells like when snow is coming, but apparently my highly evolved limbic system does because that's what it was telling me.

This coincides with an interesting conversation I had with my brother the other day.  I drove to where he works to give him a late birthday present I made for him. I dreaded handing it over to him because I was certain that he would hate it.  First of all, it's homemade and what guy likes homemade crap?  Second, you just have to know my brother -- he's half Farmer's Almanac, half UnaBomber. And what I made him was knitted cowl out of camo yarn to keep his neck warm while he is hunting or working in the woods. It's a gift that was doomed to fail on so many levels.

Turns out after an agonizing three minutes that felt more like ten minutes of him looking in the mirror and turning side to side and peering out at me with one eye he proclaimed, "You know... I like it."  At that point I had to sit down for a minute.

He then walked me outside and took a smoke break and complained that people were putting their cigarettes out in his pansy planters. My brother the UnaBomber Almanac loves to plant pansies in the winter. He describes them as "hardy as hell."  We went on to discuss the unseasonably warm weather we were having and how nice it was compared to the icy abuse that Mother Nature had heaved on us a couple of weeks ago.

"It will be like this a few more days. It's always like this until your birthday. Every year right after your birthday we get it again. It will be bad."

I stood there staring at his butt-filled pansy planters and didn't say much, wondering how in the world he remembers stuff like this that there is always a cold snap after my birthday. Who pays attention to that stuff year after year? We stood in silence for a while longer with just the sound of him blowing second-hand carcinogens out into the fresh air.

Soon I went off with not much thought about it again until I stepped out onto my porch the day after my birthday and realized that a cold snap was coming. And sure enough it's here with more to follow this weekend.

Who knows if we will get snow. We'll see. I'm no weather girl, but I do smell a change comin'!